The great Bay Area housing squeeze

Soaring housing costs are nothing new anywhere in the country, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area. What is new is UC Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project’s latest city-by-city and county-by-county look at what’s being done to combat the displacement of families from Fremont and San Jose to Santa Rosa.

The Urban Displacement Project is offering a detailed map of the policies in place across the region, from rent control to policies that promote the production of new affordable housing, like developer impact fees. Its website also contains postings of policy briefs on several of the most common policies, as well as case studies and a glossary of terms.

While the project is focused currently on the displacement of low-income families, future work will explore what’s happening with middle-income residents trying to find and hold onto affordable shelter.

See above for a news release about the project’s work (or click here). Elsewhere on this page you will find the project briefs and an earlier announcement about the project, as well as a blog posting on the these topics and a podcast about one researcher’s personal experiences with Bay Area housing.